Institutio Oratoria

Quintilian

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria, Volume 1-4. Butler, Harold Edgeworth, translator. Cambridge, Mass; London: Harvard University Press, William Heinemann Ltd., 1920-1922.

For when the philosophers describe the ideal sage who is to be consummate in all knowledge and a very god incarnate, as they say, they would have him receive instruction not merely in the knowledge of things human and divine, but would also lead him through a course of subjects, which in themselves are comparatively trivial, as for instance the elaborate subtleties of formal logic: not that acquaintance

v1-3 p.163
with the so called
horn
[*]( You have what you have not lost: you have not lost horns: therefore you have horns. ) or
crocodile
[*]( A crocodile, having seized a woman's son, said that he would restore him, if she would tell him the truth. She replied, You will not restore him. Was it the crocodile's duty to give him up? ) problems can make a man wise, but because it is important that he should never trip even in the smallest trifles.

So too the teacher of geometry, music or other subjects which I would class with these, will not be able to create the perfect orator (who like the philosopher ought to be a wise man), but none the less these arts will assist in his perfection. I may draw a parallel from the use of antidotes and other remedies applied to the eyes or to wounds. We know that these are composed of ingredients which produce many and sometimes contrary effects, but mixed together they make a single compound resembling no one of its component parts, but deriving its peculiar properties from all:

so too dumb insects produce honey, whose taste is beyond the skill of man to imitate, from different kinds of flowers and juices. Shall we marvel then, if oratory, the highest gift of providence to man, needs the assistance of many arts, which, although they do not reveal or intrude themselves in actual speaking, supply hidden forces and make their silent presence felt?

But
it will be urged
men have proved fluent without their aid.
Granted, but I am in quest of an orator.
Their contribution is but small.
Yes, but we shall never attain completeness, if minor details be lacking. And it will be agreed that though our ideal of perfection may dwell on a height that is hard to gain, it is our duty to teach all we know, that achievement may at least come somewhat nearer the goal. But why should our courage fail? The perfect orator is not contrary to the laws of nature, and it is cowardly to despair of anything that is within the bounds of possibility.
v1-3 p.165
For myself I should be ready to accept the verdict of antiquity.

Who is ignorant of the fact that music, of which I will speak first, was in ancient times the object not merely of intense study but of veneration: in fact Orpheus and Linus, to mention no others, were regarded as uniting the roles of musician, poet and philosopher. Both were of divine origin, while the former, because by the marvel of his music he soothed the savage breast, is recorded to have drawn after him not merely beasts of the wild, but rocks and trees.

So too Timagenes asserts that music is the oldest of the arts related to literature, a statement which is confirmed by the testimony of the greatest of poets in whose songs we read that the praise of heroes and of gods were sung to the music of the lyre at the feasts of kings. Does not lopas, the Vergilian bard, sing

  1. The wandering moon and labours of the Sun
Aen. i. 742.
and the like? whereby the supreme poet manifests most clearly that music is united with the knowledge even of things divine.

If this be admitted, music will be a necessity even for an orator, since those fields of knowledge, which were annexed by philosophy on their abandonment by oratory, once were ours and without the knowledge of all such things there can be no perfect eloquence.

There can in any case be no doubt that some of those men whose wisdom is a household word have been earnest students of music: Pythagoras for instance and his followers popularised the belief, which they no doubt had received from earlier teachers, that the universe is constructed on the same principles which were afterwards imitated in

v1-3 p.167
the construction of the lyre, and not content merely with emphasising that concord of discordant elements which they style harmony attributed a sound to the motions of the celestial bodies. [*]( The music of the spheres: cp. the vision of Er in Plato ( Rcp. 10) and the Somnium Scipionis of Cicero. The sounds produced by the heavenly bodies correspond to the notes of the heptachord. )

As for Plato, there are certain passages in his works, more especially in the Timaeus, [*](Tim. p. 47. ) which are quite unintelligible to those who have not studied the theory of music. But why speak only of the philosophers, whose master, Socrates, did not blush to receive instruction in playing the lyre even when far advanced in years?